Alternative diversions for kids in the modern world

Death Cloud: A Great Book

I’ve just finished an amazing novel, entitled Death Cloud (the only teen series endorsed by the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate). It revolves around the story of Sherlock Holmes, but as a teenage boy in the 1860s. It was written by Andy Lane, and has extremely gripping and suspenseful writing. In the story, Sherlock meets a boy named Matty Arnat, a poor but extremely knowledgeable “sailor” (he lives on a boat carried around by a horse). Before meeting Matty, Sherlock has moved to spend the summer with his uncle Sherrinford, a wealthy “clergyman” (as he just writes pamphlets for churches). Sherlock meets a man, his tutor, named Aymus Crowe, an American. (I apologize for these confusing details, but It’s a very complicated story. If you read it, everything will make sense.) Matty has told Sherlock of a sight he saw: a black cloud flying and going into a room in a building, escaping, and from that room the townspeople carried out a boil-covered corpse. Sherlock and Aymus find another one of these boil-covered corpses, and they finally trace these deaths to a man named Baron Maupertuis. The black clouds — SPOILER ALERT — are a very aggressive species of African bees. I would give this book 4 1/2 to 5 stars (on a scale of 1 to 5). I hope you enjoy it, too.